Apple's iCloud faced a fairly wide ranging outage early Thursday, with service like iMessage, Photo Stream and Backup & Restore down for some [updated].

Update: All services returned online before 11:30 a.m. Eastern on Thursday.

iCloud system status for Thursday. | Source: Apple

According to Apple's iCloud system status webpage, the downtime started at around 12:30 a.m. EDT and has continued for nearly six hours as of this writing.

Affected services include iCloud Documents, Photo Stream, iPhoto Journals, and Backup & Restore. iMessage users are also seeing trouble and may not be unable to send or download attachments. Late Wednesday, Apple also noted a brief period in which users were unable to create an Apple ID.

Less than one percent of users are affected by the outage, though that number could be in the millions given iCloud now has over 300 million members.

While not as pervasive as the iCloud and iTunes service outage seen in June, which affected some 20 percent of users, today's downtime hits some of the service's main features.

Maybe Apple should consider less in the way of stock buyback and more on infrastructure?

Fully agree. It is fine for the online store to be down before the release of a product in order to create buzz and draw anticipation. But it is a total joke to have your services disrupted every couple of weeks any time Apple "sneezes" and for no apparent reason.

Whatsapp is much better. And they are much smaller and have a larger installer base. So, I assume, messaging is not that difficult. Yet Apple cannot manage to maintain it to a sufficient uptime level.

Fully agree. It is fine for the online store to be down before the release of a product in order to create buzz and draw anticipation. But it is a total joke to have your services disrupted every couple of weeks any time Apple "sneezes" and for no apparent reason.

Whatsapp is much better. And they are much smaller and have a larger installer base. So, I assume, messaging is not that difficult. Yet Apple cannot manage to maintain it to a sufficient uptime level.

Yep, the more I think of it the more of a joke it is.

But we have to think of those poor, unfortunate and downtrodden executives in the boardroom who need to worry about the growth in value of their stock options.

I noticed yesterday when I sent texts via Mac I got the replies pushed to my iPhone but not to my Mac. At least not for a few minutes which is bad for an instant messaging service. They need to fix those iCloud issues asap.

Fully agree. It is fine for the online store to be down before the release of a product in order to create buzz and draw anticipation. But it is a total joke to have your services disrupted every couple of weeks any time Apple "sneezes" and for no apparent reason.

Whatsapp is much better. And they are much smaller and have a larger installer base. So, I assume, messaging is not that difficult. Yet Apple cannot manage to maintain it to a sufficient uptime level.

Yep, the more I think of it the more of a joke it is.

According to the article, it's less than one percent of their users for less than a day, not all of their cloud services, and iMessage still works over the cell phone network. Could be millions of people, but it could be less than that as well. I want 100% uptime, too, but you guys have pretty high standards if this seems like a joke.

What would you people do in an actual emergency? You're running around with your hair on fire because iCloud is limping along. I was working for at&t in 1988 when a fire destroyed the Hinsdale, IL central switching office, near Chicago. It took almost a full month for any kind of service to be restored. There were articles in the newspapers about how people were "coping" with the disaster. Some putz lost his job because his girlfriend couldn't call him in the morning to wake him up. Businesses lost tons of money.

What would you do if the Internet went down? Go out and blow your brains out because you can't complain about it on some blog? Get some kind of grip will you.

What would you people do in an actual emergency? You're running around with your hair on fire because iCloud is limping along. I was working for at&t in 1988 when a fire destroyed the Hinsdale, IL central switching office, near Chicago. It took almost a full month for any kind of service to be restored. There were articles in the newspapers about how people were "coping" with the disaster. Some putz lost his job because his girlfriend couldn't call him in the morning to wake him up. Businesses lost tons of money.

What would you do if the Internet went down? Go out and blow your brains out because you can't complain about it on some blog? Get some kind of grip will you.

A very fair complaint, but some of Apple's competitors -- even bigger ones (e.g. AWS) -- manage more uptime.

No other option but to delete iCloud backups as it kept doing the same thing after a few days. They have hundreds of millions of customers so it's understandable that sometimes things will get messed up but so does Facebook, Google and even a small company like Dropbox (400 or so staff). Apple tried to buy DropBox at one point but were turned down. It would be a pretty big investment:

Maybe Apple should consider less in the way of stock buyback and more on infrastructure?

Yep, you sure know how to run the wealthiest company on the planet, you do.

Originally Posted bylkrupp

What would you do if the Internet went down? Go out and blow your brains out because you can't complain about it on some blog? Get some kind of grip will you.

"Dear YouTube,

That last video, dQw4w9WgXcQ, was hilarious. I wish to convey my most sincere gratitude for your hosting thereof, as well as to reply to a comment made by a Mr. XxX_Cat_Person_420_XxX. My reply is as follows: You are a douchenozzle.

Apple uses a different color for planned outages so this one doesn't appear to be planned "pre-release maintenance" does it? Further, how would you explain only 1% thereabouts as impacted if it was just preparation for iOS7 release? I'm not saying it is or isn't but nothing to me indicates it's a outage to be blamed on routine maintenance.

Which is worse: half the world for 4 minutes or 300k people for 11 hours? The problem with these reports before the services go back up is news sites can't know how many people it affects until afterwards. It is news if it turns out to have affected a lot of people, otherwise it's just talking points for people who revel in seeing Apple fail.